Kevin De Bruyne is determined to ensure he does not leave Manchester City in the rare position of having missed out on Champions League football after orchestrating their 5-2 win over Crystal Palace.
The Premier League has five qualification places for the Champions League this season and City leapfrogged Newcastle United and Chelsea, both of whom play on Sunday, into the top four with an emphatic win.
Yet after 21 minutes it looked as if City would suffer a huge setback as goals from Eberechi Eze and Chris Richards gave Palace a 2-0 lead.
Eze had the ball in the net for a superb third, only for the goal to be correctly ruled out for offside, and that proved a turning point in the game.
De Bruyne, having hit the post before Eze’s disallowed effort, halved the deficit in the 33rd minute by curling a free-kick in off the post, and then teed up Omar Marmoush for the equaliser three minutes later with a cushioned header that allowed the Egyptian to lash home.
He then laid off for Mateo Kovacic to make it 3-2 two minutes after the restart, and further goals from James McAtee and Nico O’Reilly made sure of the points.
De Bruyne announced last week he will leave the club at the end of the season and, following his outstanding display, he made it clear what he wants to give the club as a parting gift.
“I think we started well, had a couple of chances and out of nowhere we’re 2-0 behind and it could have been three,” De Bruyne told BBC Match of the Day.
“The response was good. I thought overall we played pretty much a good game but we gave chances away and they pounced on it. The reaction was really good and in the end I think we deserved to win.
“I think it was important to score as quickly as possible and change the feeling of the game a bit. I didn’t think we were playing that bad but the scoreline wasn’t good at all. We went from there.”
“I want to go away with a Champions League for this team because they deserve it. We’ve been in the Champions League for the nine, 10 years that I’ve been here so I hope we can do that for the team next year and I’ll just try to play good football like I’ve always done.”
City have played in the Champions League in each of the last 14 seasons, but their hopes extending that streak to a 15th campaign are still in jeopardy despite the win.
They are two points ahead of both Chelsea and Newcastle. Chelsea host Ipswich Town on Sunday before Newcastle take on Manchester United at St James’ Park. The Magpies then host Palace in their game in hand on Wednesday.
“We’ll see tomorrow the position, it will be so tight. It will be until the end. Six games left, difficult games,” manager Pep Guardiola said of the Champions League race to Match of the Day.
On De Bruyne’s showing, he added: “The Kevin we have known for many years. I know he’s struggled the last year and a half. He’s free without pain and completely different. The way we played helped him a lot with incredible runners, the young lads, the full-backs.
“I would say we played really good all game. We were 2-0 down and we created a lot and I said at half time we were playing good.
Our momentum was sparked with a free-kick from Kevin and after that we played a really good game considering we were 2-0 down and considering how Crystal Palace have been in the past games.”